Walking slowly around my sweet new ride, hand slowly brushing the polished surface, my friend Ron raised his eyebrows and asked, “Do you think you might be having a midlife crisis?”
“Well I certainly hope so, otherwise what is the point?!” Why else would a man in his 30’s buy a sports car?
Any day now, we will welcome GCCjr into the world
While I’ve long been referring to our future son by GCCjr on the blog, between Winnie and I we have been referring to him as Cookie. Go Curry Cookie!
His birth will usher in a new era in our lives, and with it a new era for the blog
Gone will be the posts on finances and investing. No longer will we share our detailed expenses. Travel and food posts will be a thing of the past
In their place will be page upon page of photos and videos of little Cookie
Everybody loves baby photos. Really, the only thing people love more than baby photos is photos of other peoples babies.
I expect with these changes, readership will go through the roof. I’m optimistic our blog will even compete with Google and Facebook for domination of the Internet
To further enhance the site, we will also be adding a new forum where people across the globe can swap photos of their own babies. Or cats, if that is your thing
Here are two prenatal ultrasound photos to get things started
He Has Daddy’s Nose
And 5 Toes
A newborn will typically resemble one of the parents. But which one?
Winnie Holding Her Brother
Jeremy Wearing Hipster Clothes Before They Were Cool
Extra curious, we used some software to combine an image of mother and father
When you combine Asian and Caucasian genes, what is the resulting eye shape? Why not one of each
Not Designed for Mixed Babies
We hope you are as excited as we are about the new blog focus.
Don’t forget to sign up for the mailing list. One lucky winner has the potential to win* a Go Curry Cookie themed Digital Picture Frame
, for use in streaming baby photos directly from the blog!
What better day to get it all started, then April 1st
Happy April Fools Day!
* small print – there actually is no digital picture frame, but the mailing list is cool anyway
Welcome to Go Curry Cracker!
We thought it would be helpful to have a brief introduction to help get you started
We are Jeremy & Winnie, a husband and wife team who retired in our 30’s to travel the world.
On our blog we share how we were able to become both financially independent and location independent at a relatively young age, and use that freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want.
We will often geek out on saving and investment strategies, tax optimization, and travel hacking, while mixing in stories of life, travel, and food
Who doesn’t want to Retire 20% Faster or Never Pay Taxes Again?
Winnie is a professionally trained photographer, and her carefully crafted images help tie it all together
We did unconventional things while working, such as live in a small apartment in a walkable neighborhood instead of a big house in the suburbs, using a bicycle and our own feet to get around instead of owning a car, and making most of our meals in our own kitchen (even our own bread.)
This allowed us save an increasing percentage of our income, more than 70% for about 10 years until we were able to live completely off income generated by our investments
When we first retired, we had grand ambitions to tour all of Latin America, Europe, and Asia in one monumental journey, but then…
…then we realized, “What’s the rush?!” We have 60 years to complete our journey (or not.) There is no competition to check off a list of countries we’ve visited or places we’ve been (although we’ve been to ~40 countries to date)
So we traveled (very) slowly, immersing ourselves in local language and culture
Definitely not a backpacker lifestyle, we’ve rented places with a private pool, dine in restaurants 2 or 3 times a day, and had great adventures such as swimming with whale sharks. All of this luxurious living costs a whole lot less than you would think, which is why we share every penny we spend
When we decided we were ready to have a baby, we used our location independence for Medical Tourism, undergoing IVF treatments at 80% off US prices
We are expecting GCCjr any day now. When he is about 6 months old and ready to don his own little backpack, we will hit the road once again
Thank you for stopping by. We hope you like what you see
Questions? Ask away
Jeremy & Winnie
Team Curry Cracker
“This project in Taipei is really taking off, it would probably make a lot of sense for me to be based there rather than fly back and forth each month”
Over the past year, I had flown to Asia at least 10 times. Business class flights are not cheap, and with hotels and meals included it would be far cheaper for the company for me to stay in Taipei
This was all very logical, how could they say no?
But my manager was having none of it
“Who is the girl?” he asked
Pit of Despair
When we last checked in with our young aspiring early retiree, he was buried under a mound of mortgage debt, out of cash, out of hope, and spending his evenings playing David Gray songs on the guitar while imbibing gin and tonics so he could sleep
Will he forever be locked in the pit of despair? Will his employer cut him loose and the bank take the house?
Probably not, but no story is complete without a little drama
—–
“Everybody take the $100 bill we asked you to bring out of your pocket and hold it up in the air”
1 thousand arms go up, bills waving about rhythmically
The past two hours had gone by in a blur, with audience dutifully completing the speaker’s carefully crafted sentences. I felt like I might be at a Heaven’s Gate religious group cult meeting
But No… this was a get rich seminar, Open Your Millionaire Mind or some drivel like that
Volunteers were setting up tables at the front of the room with burning candles.
“OK, we are going to do an exercise. When I give the command, form a line leading to the table at the end of your row and place your $100 bill into the flame.”
“WTF!”, I thought. I looked around and saw countless others doing the same. The look of determination on some faces was disturbing
“OK, everybody get in line.” People started to line up, a surprising number of them. As the first made their way to the front, many of the undecided started to follow. I put my $100 bill back in my wallet and sat down.
As the lines grew longer, the staff blew out the candles. The lights came back on as the speaker said, “That’s it, the exercise is over. Everybody return to your seats. Take 5 minutes and think hard about your true feelings of this exercise, and write them down in your notebook. What does it say about your relationship with money?”
I’m pretty sure what it means is, if you got in line to burn $100 you are probably a good candidate to sign up for a $4,000 “special training”
